At Langley, we serve students from age three to age 14. Preschool through eighth grade. This is a period in a child's life when there is intense, physical, physiological, intellectual, and emotional growth. And we want to be there for every minute of it.
Our research-based child centered model balances inquiry-based academics with social-emotional learning. That way, we can make sure every child every day has those intellectual challenges they need to grow and thrive, balanced with all sorts of supports that they also need and those soft skills they need to learn.
To create the strongest curriculum to meet the needs of our community, we needed to build it from scratch. "REACH" is our custom-made SEL program. We knew that there were three components that we believe are most critical. The first was building emotional awareness or emotional intelligence. So really helping students to understand what they feel, when they feel it, how to identify their emotions, and then really how to cope with their emotions.
The second prong that we felt was really critical was sort of health and wellness, to understand how their bodies work, to know how to have good nutrition, how to make sure they were sleeping enough, how they could manage their stress in effective ways.
And then the third prong was really related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and helping students to understand their own identity and being able to understand and relate to people who are different from them.
Our whole program is designed around creating a very solid foundation on which children can build their future learning and in fact their whole life.